I recently found I was getting hard fault’ memory errors. When I turn on my system there are several minutes where it is unusable. Once it has done that, it operates as normal. My start-up processes are trimmed down to the bare minimum.
I believe hard faults are caused by Windows running out of memory and using the swap file. I am using Windows Vista (32-bit) with 2GB of RAM So I went on to the Crucial website and ordered another 2GB. Once installed, I found it made no difference! I tried swapping the modules over but no joy.
Speccy reports 4GB. Windows View basic Info reports 4GB. All other utilities also report 4GB. But Windows Task Manager only reports 2GB (2046), which is what it was before I did the upgrade!
Is there a registry hack to fix this ?
Dave
There are a few possible reasons why Task Manager may not show the actual amount of RAM you have installed in your PC. so let’s look at a couple of them to try an narrow down your problem.
It’s possible that the two RAM modules you have aren’t fully compatible with each other, and Windows cannot properly use them, despite showing the full amount of RAM elsewhere.
| Windows and the system BIOS can reserve memory for specific uses, such as on-board video, and you can check this in Resource Manager |
As the motherboard you’re using (Foxconn G31MX, as shown in your supplied screen grabs) has only two memory slots, there’s no reason to worry about position, however, so I’d double-check this, and ensure you have compatible modules.
It’s entirely possible that you have the 4GB of RAM, but Windows is using a portion of it, so only half is available. 2GB could be assigned to cache memory or reserved for hardware (such as on-board graphics) and is therefore unavailable for other uses. You can check this by clicking the Resource Monitor button in Task Manager and then selecting the memory section. You’ll see here your memory use, as well as cached memory, and how much is actually available. You’ll also see if any is hardware reserved.
If your system is using on-board video (the Foxconn G31 MX has Intel GMA 3 WO on-board graphics), a portion of the RAM may well be assigned to that (denoted by hardware reserved, as above). Check the BIOS for this, and ensure this isn’t where the extra RAM is going. If you don’t need that much power for the GPU. dial it back. I’d say this is the most possible cause of your problem.